Tag: hunger

Dan Stewart

Save the Children , South Sudan

June 16, 2014

“Nyandong* looks straight at me. She is unflinching. Small, thin limbs occasionally wrap around her or clamber up, looking for purchase, as her children mill around us. She has her malnourished one year old boy quiet and still in her arms and her face is intent as she tells me what has happened to her family since brutal fighting engulfed many parts of Jonglei, South Sudan, in December.

“Innocent people were killed in those days. There were a lot of us running together then some of the people we were with got caught. They were surrounded and killed. It was just by luck that we survived. We crouched and hid behind a fence, just hoping no-one would find us. I could see the scared faces of my children, and armed men walking the streets looking for people to kill.

“When the sun set we left. We took nothing and it took us thirty days to walk here. We ate the leaves off the trees and I thought we would die of thirst. When we saw birds circling in the sky we followed them because we hoped they would be flying above water. I don’t know how we survived.

“My children kept asking me for food and water but I didn’t have any. The children were constantly crying. They got rashes on their skin and became thin. They wanted to stop. They fell down on their knees and cut themselves. I had to pull them along – if we stopped we would have died there. My daughter had to bring her little brother, but he was too tired. I had to tell her to drag him along even though he cried.

We are talking in remote Nyirol county, in an area set back from the frontline where tens of thousands of people have fled for safety. But Nyandong explains that for her family and many others, one threat has been replaced by another. Severe hunger is the price they have paid to escape the bullets.

“We depend on others. When people in the community give us some food, then we can eat. We eat one small meal a day. We mix grass and leaves in with sorghum to make it last longer. The leaves are very bad for children – it gives them diarrhoea.

There is just one chink of light. Save the Children screened Nyandong’s 1 year old daughter Sunday* and found she was severely malnourished. We have been providing therapeutic feeding to begin nursing her back to health. “Sunday was about to die” Nyandong says. “She was very thin. A baby should walk one year after she is born but Sunday is more than a year old and still she can’t because of the malnourishment. If she has food I know she will walk soon. And my other children are suffering so much. They have nothing.”

In South Sudan 50,000 children are likely to die from malnourishment unless treatment is scaled up immediately. Save the Children is helping catch children like Sunday before it is too late, but we need your help to reach more.

Cat Carter, Head of Humanitarian Information & Communications

Save the Children UK

September 24, 2013

Father of three Ahmad grins at
me from inside his tent. It’s a wide, toothy grin and I’m immediately charmed.
We shake hands and he invites us inside, settling us down on the floor with a
blanket before insisting we take coffee. It’s Ramadan, and I’m keenly aware that
it must be hard for fasting Muslims to watch as others drink (those observing
Ramadan don’t eat or drink anything all day, until sundown), but he insists and
eventually simply brings out a pot of coffee and pours it for us. He sits down
to explain why they eventually left Syria, after more than two years of
conflict.

“We
were surviving only day-to-day, and if I missed even one day of working because
of the fighting, I could not afford the food for my family. And that is what
happened in the end, the fighting meant we could not work, and food was too
expensive. We borrowed some money to pay for a little food, but that soon ran
out. We could not afford to survive – there was no life for us left in Syria.”

He
looks at his children and continues softly “it is the worst feeling as a
father, being unable to give your children food – worse even than the bullets
and shells.”

Now
in Lebanon, it’s still a struggle, but things are a little better for Ahmad.
He’s been working with Save the Children’s Cash for Work programme, which
involved him cleaning up the camp. He was paid in cash (better than payment
with food vouchers because it gives the family the option to buy exactly what
they need). He used the cash for water and food for the whole family, and tells
me it lasted a long time. His gratitude is evident, but I’m embarrassed to
receive it – as a compromise I promise to pass on the thanks to the Save the
Children Cash for Work team responsible for setting up the project.

We
talk more generally about the situation in Syria, and what Ahmad thinks will
happen next. Working in the field, you’re often told to avoid contentious
topics like politics and religion.. But Ahmad isn’t interested in siding with
the opposition or the government.

He
shakes his head sadly at me and tell me that this whole war “is a war on
children – food, water, shells – they all kill the children first”. He tells me
that he just wants peace, so he can take his children home.

Penny just returned to the United States after spending two weeks surveying Save the Children's food crisis relief programs in Ethiopia.

_________________________

Little Haway from drought-parched Ethiopia had something special to celebrate on her first birthday – being alive. Her village, in what had been the dairy capitol of Ethiopia, has been devastated by drought. For two years, the rains haven’t come. Massive herds of goats and cows have been decimated. Almost nothing grows and fertile pastures are turning into deserts. Village children had nothing to eat but bark from the dying shrubs.

The drought took a significant toll on Haway’s village, her mother fell ill and couldn’t nurse her and there was no longer any milk to drink since the livestock had perished.

Haway became dangerously malnourished and weighed only 12 pounds when she was brought to a Save the Children emergency nutrition program. She was skin and bones, extreme hunger and severe acute malnutrition consumed her tiny body.

Like almost all children in drought-affected regions of Ethiopia, Haway also suffered from infections due to a lack of clean drinking water in her village. Infections hasten dangerous dehydration and muscle-wasting, forcing malnourished children into a rapid downward spiral.

“You have to treat babies like Haway very carefully as feeding them the wrong nutrients can be dangerous,” says Sisay Demeke, a Save the Children emergency nutrition coordinator. “First, we treated her illness and restored her body’s balance of water, sodium and essential minerals.”

Once Haway became stable enough to digest protein and fat, she began receiving a weight-gaining mixture of milk, vitamins, minerals, grain, sugar and oil. And then she began to thrive. She went from listless to vibrant in just a few days. Her sunken face became full, eventually plumping up to the chubby-cheeked baby you see today.

Haway became well enough to go home and begin the out-patient treatment program – consisting of high-nutrient, high-calorie foods and water purification supplies.

The village matriarch, also named Haway, was astounded by the baby girl’s recovery. She has since become a health volunteer for Save the Children and has been trained to keep an eagle eye on health problems in her small tribal village.

“I am happy to give back by being a health volunteer. If there were no Save the Children, many of the babies in my village would have died,” she says.

“They [Save the Children] give a very good service. The guys are clever and wash their hands. The food they provide to kids is very good and the way they provide it is kind.”

With her entire village now involved with Save the Children’s health and nutrition programs, Haway and the other young children have the support and hope they need to make it until rains will come back.

Each night, 925 million people go to bed hungry. This number, which has increased in past years due to a spike in food prices in 2007-2008, is unacceptable. In a world of plenty, how is it that so many have to suffer through malnutrition and hunger pains on a daily basis?

This is the question the panelists addressed today as they discussed the key focus points of the Hunger Report and the programs that will help to reduce the number of malnourished children. According to Inger Andersen, one in five children worldwide is malnourished. Save the Children’s Carolyn Miles emphasized that child malnutrition creates lifelong and generational impacts: growth is stunted, immune systems are compromised, and cognitive function is negatively affected. The first 1,000 days – from pregnancy to age two – is the critical time for child development.

In an effort to eradicate hunger, the 2011 report has outlined various programs that focus on linking agricultural practices with good nutrition. Dr. Shah highlighted ways to introduce farmers to crops such as drought-resistant corn and more nutritional grains, increasing family income as well as improving health. Carolyn Miles recommended that these programs happen on the ground in an integrated way to ensure that families grow foods packed with nutrition, citing the example of a family in Guatemala that she recently visited. The family has two sons with a three year age difference, yet both children are the same height and weight because the younger son had the benefit of a Save the Children integrated agriculture, nutrition, and livestock project.

During the question and answer session, one reporter asked Dr. Shah how participating organizations will measure the success of these anti-hunger programs. Dr. Shah responded by expressing that hunger will not be eradicated in five years. This is just not feasible. However, the main goal right now is to target five to ten countries, decrease the number of people who go hungry every day, and use those examples to prove that this can be done on a larger scale.

As the discussion came to a close, the panelists highlighted the most important points to take away from the well received report. According to Carolyn Miles, it is “critical that we focus on the most vulnerable families.” In perhaps one of the most powerful statements made Monday morning, Dr. Shah concluded the discussion by calling the fight against hunger the “challenge of our time.”